The Custom House

The General that the narrator talks about in “The Custom House” holds some characteristics that we have seen to be valued by transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau. He is “remote” and has appreciation for nature or “the floral tribe” (20). The narrator thinks that perhaps the General lives a more “real life inside his thoughts” (20). However, the narrator includes this man as part of the Custom House that stifles his creativity and individuality. Can you point to a specific passage(s) that explain why the narrator does not think the General is a true spiritual thinker? What differentiates between the General and the narrator?

Also, what do you believe is the significance that this story took place in a custom house rather than another place in Salem (besides the fact that Hawthorne worked there)? Why would a custom house be particularly ill adapted “to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility” (28)? How does this connect to the General and the narrator and how they fit the roles of transcendentalism?
You do not have to address all of these things.

Housekeeping Class Discussion

The topic that was debated most in today’s discussion was probably the issue of whether or not Ruth is dead or alive when she narrates Housekeeping. Both sides of this argument are easily sustained. Lines in the novel such as “The perimeters of our wandering are nowhere” are ambiguous (Robinson 219). This line could be referring of the unrestrained open road for living Ruth and Sylvie or the infinite existence of the afterlife. However, maybe the purpose of the vagueness is to highlight that it does not matter if she is alive or if she is dead. Carolyn summed this up nicely when she said “Ruthie is nothing”. Ms. Parrish asked, "Did crossing the bridge give Ruthie and Sylvie liberation or death"? Well, is death not a form of liberation? Either away Sylvie and Ruth escaped Fingerbone and the pressures of society. Robinsons’s purposeful lack of clarity unites freedom and the afterlife.
I also think it is interesting that the book never mentions the characters being able to see across the bridge. Ruth and Sylvie can see across the lake and travel across. They can see the middle when they find Sylvie “[peering] cautiously over the side” (81). But what is directly beyond the isolation of Fingerbone is not mentioned, almost as if it does not exist. Even on the front cover the bridge is visible until it hits a cloud of fog that obscures the view of the world beyond (see below).





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The reader can imagine Ruth and Sylvie simply fading way into nothingness, like transient people or ghostly figures. Robinson blurs the lines of many seeming contradictions. She says, “All this is fact. Fact explains nothing” (217). Her ambiguity is intended and it explains how not everything is easily defined and the only things that hold steadfast are love and the desire for freedom. Perhaps, this extends to as far as the hero of the novel. Is it Ruth or Lucille? Whose actions are justified? All we know is that when Ruth and Sylvie walk into the fog of the bridge all they have is each other and the hope for a release from their troubled pasts. Ruth and Sylvie still have love and freedom, whether they live or die, whether they are hero or coward, these things break through all the uncertainty.

Question on The Raven

Random...Did either of you guys get the feeling that maybe this is all going on in the narrator's head?

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Obviously, Poe is using very convincing appeals if he can convince the reader his poem is from the heart when he really used a formulaic process. The purpose of Poe's piece was to create a poem that would be well recieved by both "the popular and the critical taste" (Poe 164). His audience than, we can assume, is anyone who picks up his piece to read. Poe sets himself the difficult task to appeal to any reader. Poe follows his idea that emotion should be implied rather than said outright which worked well for the Pathos argument. It is haunting when the narrator asuures himself the sound outside his door is only "some late night visitor" (Poe 3;6). He seems to be trying to keep himself from thinking about Lenore and the possibility it is her. The point when the narrator opens the door to find "darkness" instead of Lenore which means "light" a feeling of dissapointment or sadness is triggered in the reader (Poe 4;6). It is grim to think in a poem filled with such darkness the narrator can never find light as light is gone forever. Poe also has a good Ethos argument. He may say his poetic process does not involve much emotion, but his tone of mourning and darkness could only come from someone who has seen such things before. For example, when the narrator questions the raven he already knows the depressing answers he will recieve. Poe describes this as the narrator expressing "the human thirst for self-torture" (Poe 171). If Poe had never felt this thirst before, how would he have written about it so in depth? Poe's knowledge of such experiences makes him a reliable and trustworthy narrator. The reader knows he has felt and dealt with difficult situations before; his ideas do not come from out of nowhere. He also says he has read "forgotten Lore" which is, perhaps, a reference to the Greek mythology he references. Being so learned in classical literature makes him seem a knowledgable writer and trustworthy narrator. He talks of how the raven perches on the "bust of Pallas"(Poe 6;5). The Raven is a symbol not only of death, but of intelligence and so is Pallas Athena's (I am guessing its her not Pallas daughter of Triton???) animal the owl. However it is a raven in this poem not an owl. The raven perched on the bust than suggests a twisted reality which correspond to the tone of the poem.